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NOTES.

Page 2.

But, ah! they cannot hear my closing song,
Those hearts, for whom my earliest lays were tried.

"Where are the smiles I longed to gain,

The pledge of labour not in vain ?"

MONTGOMERY WORLD BEFORE THE

FLOOD Address to the Spirit of a departed Friend.

"To understand the dedication," says Mr. Hayward, "it is necessary to refer to the history of the book. The plan of Faust appears to have been in Goethe's mind very early in life. He puts it down amongst the works written between 1769 and 1775, in the list appended to the Stuttgart and Tubingen octavo edition of 1829.

"According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of Faust appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of Goethe's works, which was published in 1808."— HAYWARD'S Faust, p. 216.

Page 5.

Thoughts by the soul conceived in silent joy,
Sounds often muttered by the timid voice,
Tried by the nice ear, delicate of choice,
Till we at last are pleased, or self-deceived,
The whole a rabble's madness may destroy.

"The shifts and turns,

The' expedients and inventions multiform,
To which the mind resorts, in chase of terms,
Though apt, yet coy, and difficult to win
To arrest the fleeting images, that fill
The mirror of the mind, and hold them fast,
And force them sit, till he has pencilled off
A faithful likeness of the forms he views;
Then to dispose his copies with such art,
That each may find its most propitious light,
And shine by situation, hardly less
Than by the labour and the skill it cost;

Are occupations of the poet's mind

So pleasing, and that steal away the thought
With such address from themes of sad import,

That, lost in his own musings, happy man!

He feels the' anxieties of life, denied

Their wonted entertainment, all retire.

Such joys hath he that sings. But ah! not such,
Or seldom such, the hearers of his song.
Fastidious, or else listless, or perhaps
Aware of nothing arduous in a task
They never undertook, they little note
His dangers or escapes, and haply find

There least amusement where he found the most."

COWPER. The Task, Book II.

Page 5.

Sounds often muttered by the timid voice.

Was sich die Lippe schüchtern vorgelallt.

GOETHE.

I have looked from curiosity to Mr. Hayward's translation of this passage, knowing that, though I sought to preserve literal fidelity to the original, mine was coloured by my recollection of Wordsworth. I can scarcely bring myself to quote the lines disconnected from the passage to which they so intimately belong as scarcely to have a separate life; but any one whom I may lead to read for the first time, or to reperuse the poem, will thank me.

"I think on thee

My brother, and on all which thou hast lost.
Nor seldom, if I rightly guess, while thou,
Muttering the verses which I muttered first
Among the mountains, through the midnight watch
Art pacing to and fro the vessel's deck

In some far region, here, while o'er my head
At every impulse of the moving breeze
The fir-grove murmurs with a sea-like sound,
Alone I tread the path; for aught I know,
Timing my steps to thine; and with a store
Of undistinguishable sympathies,
Mingling most earnest wishes for the day

When we,
and others whom we love, shall meet
A second time in Grasmere's happy vale."

Poems on the naming of Places.

Mr. Hayward's words are, stammered to itself."

"What the lip tremblingly

Page 9.

The highest gift that ever Nature gave.

"For what hast thou to do with wealth or power,
Thou, whom rich Nature at thy happy birth
Blest in her bounty with the largest dower
That Heaven indulges to a child of earth;
Then when the sacred sisters for their own
Baptised thee in the springs of Helicon?

SOUTHEY Lay of the Laureate.

Page 10.

And bid the jarring individual be

A chord, that, in the general consecration,
Bears part with all in musical relation?

"With other ministrations, thou, O Nature,
Healest thy wandering and distempered child:
Thou pourest on him thy soft influences,

Thy sunny hues, fair forms, and breathing sweets;
Thy melodies of woods, and winds and waters!
Till he relent, and can no more endure

To be a jarring and a dissonant thing
Amidst this general dance and minstrelsy;
But, bursting into tears, wins back his way,
His angry spirit healed and harmonized
By the benignant touch of love and beauty."
COLERIDGE REMORSE: Speech of
Alvar in the Dungeon.

These lines are so beautiful that the reader who only sees them thus separated from the context will scarcely believe how much they lose by not being read in connection with the passage to which they belong. I ought, perhaps, have contented myself with a reference.